Descriptive and Network Post-Occupancy Evaluation of the Urban Public Space through Social Media: A Case Study of Bryant Park, NY

Authors

Bo Zhang, Oklahoma State UniversityFollow
Yang Song, Texas A & M University - College StationFollow
Dingyi Liu, Beijing Jiaotong UniversityFollow
Zhongzhong Zeng, Beijing Jiaotong UniversityFollow
Shuying Guo, LEI Wageningen URFollow
Qiuyi Yang, The University Of MichiganFollow
Yuhan Wen, Tianjin UniversityFollow
Wenji Wang, Columbia UniversityFollow
Xiwei Shen, University of Nevada, Las VegasFollow

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

7-13-2023

Publication Title

Land

Volume

12

Issue

7

First page number:

1

Last page number:

17

Abstract

In modern cities, urban public spaces, such as parks, gardens, plazas, and streets, play a big role in people’s social activities, physical activities, mental health, and overall well-being. However, the traditional post-occupancy evaluation (POE) process for public spaces such as large urban parks is extremely difficult, especially for long-term user experiences through observations, surveys, and interviews. On the other hand, social media has emerged as a major media outlet recording millions of user experiences to the public, which provides opportunities to inform how public space is used and perceived by users. Furthermore, unlike previous research that primarily presented descriptive characters of park programs, our study employs a network model to elucidate the interactive relationships and intensities among reported park elements, human activities, and experiences. This approach enables us to track the sources within the space that impact people’s perceptions, such as weather conditions, food options, and notable landmarks. The utilization of this network model opens avenues for future research to comprehensively investigate the factors shaping people’s perceptions in public open spaces. This study uses Bryant Park as an example and presents a new analytical framework, POSE (post-occupancy social media evaluation), to support long-term POE studies for large public spaces. Methods such as data automation, descriptive statistics, and social network analysis were used. The identification and quantification of meaningful park activities, scenes, and sentiments as well as their relationships will help optimize the design and management of park programs.

Keywords

public space; urban development; post-occupancy evaluation; landscape performance

Disciplines

Environmental Design | Landscape Architecture | Urban, Community and Regional Planning

File Format

pdf

File Size

4200 KB

Language

English

Rights

IN COPYRIGHT. For more information about this rights statement, please visit http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Repository Citation

Zhang, B., Song, Y., Liu, D., Zeng, Z., Guo, S., Yang, Q., Wen, Y., Wang, W., Shen, X. (2023). Descriptive and Network Post-Occupancy Evaluation of the Urban Public Space through Social Media: A Case Study of Bryant Park, NY. Land, 12(7), 1-17.
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/land12071403